Road Rash (And Other Injuries)
by dare-to-do-our-duty
Summary: Time travel is a rough business. Doc doesn't get a good look at Marty's injuries until Marty is almost killed, and then finds out that the teenager was hiding a whole lot more than some bruises. BTTF3.


Road Rash

The long rope was getting tighter and tighter around his neck, cutting off the air and making black spots dance across his vision, partially obscuring the sneering face of Buford "Mad Dog" Tannen.

Tannen's cronies whooped and hollered, laughing as Marty swung from the rope, the rough cord burning his skin with the friction. A blurred figure stopped in the distance. Then, a gunshot. Marty fell to the ground, scrabbling with one hand to pull the noose from around his neck.

He missed the first half of the exchange while he was sucking oxygen back into his body. Only when Doc raised the modified shotgun to his shoulder and Buford Tannen and his men rode off did Marty manage to stagger to his feet and look at the man who he had come back to rescue.

"Marty... I gave you explicit instructions not to come here but to go directly back to 1985."

"I know, Doc, but I had to co-" Marty bent over, dizzy, trying to equalize the blood between his throbbing head and the rest of his body.

"But it's good to see you, Marty." Doc walked over, cowboy boots clinking, and pulled Marty into a hug. He looked him up and down, shaking his head. "Marty, you're going to have to do something about those clothes. Walking around town like that, you're liable to get shot."

Marty couldn't help but look back at the pile of rope on the ground in front of the courthouse scaffolding, rubbing his raw neck. "Or hanged."

"What idiot dressed you in that outfit?"

"You did." Marty smiled at Doc Brown, but it quickly dropped off his face as he swayed again, his body protesting all the abuse of the last... was it only a week and a half?

Doc looked him over again, his bushy eyebrows creasing in concern. "Let's get back to the shop, and I'll take a look, see if we can't get you cleaned up a little, and then you can sleep while I find you new clothing."

Marty nodded, then regretted it when a wave of dizziness washed over him. "Woah..."

"Marty..." Doc slipped a shoulder under the arm of his wounded friend, creasing his eyebrows as Marty tried to hide a sharp wince at the slight pressure. "Trust me, you do not want 1885 medication. Just try to hang on until we get back to the shop."

The pair turned down a back alley, avoiding the curious stares and prying eyes of the Western townspeople. Keeping one arm under Marty, Doc unlatched a rudimentary combination lock made of twisted, interlocked bars of steel and helped the teenager through the door.

He gently pushed him down on a chair lined with some cushions and Marty lowered his head to his knees. "That's right, Marty. Your body's just confused because your brain didn't have enough blood. It'll sort itself out."

Marty laughed, a strained sound. "That's not all my body's working on, Doc." Doc frowned at him, the crease of concern in his eyebrows threatening to make itself a permanent feature.

Keeping his head as low as possible and bringing it up slowly to let the blood equalize, Marty first sluggishly stripped down to his boxers, baring his legs, then began to unbutton his shirt with as little effort as possible.

Doc helped pull the stiff faux-leather jacket off of him, then simply cut off the dirty, torn undershirt with a pair of scissors, cutting a slit up the back.

He walked back around Marty and couldn't hide his shock at all of his young friend's injuries.

One of Marty's legs seemed mostly fine, just a few purpling bruises. The right leg, though, had been cut deeply and was bleeding profusely, probably by some sharp rock while he was being pulled by the horse. Marty's arms had sustained several bruises and scrapes, but seemed mostly fine. His neck was rubbed raw by the rope and was bruising in a collar-like pattern. His head had a small lump, just above the hairline, but that seemed to have been tended to already.

But Marty's torso - Doc didn't even know where to begin. Rubbed raw by the rocks and dirt of the rough settlement road, his tattered epidermis was already darkened by a dozen apple-sized bruises, dotted along his ribs and stomach. "Marty, what happened?"

Marty seemed to rouse himself; he was sliding quietly into a doze. Doc regretted having to wake him, but he needed to know the whats, whens, and wheres so he could clean Marty up a bit.

Marty coughed, wincing at the pain that lanced up his sides. He tried to grin at Doc, but couldn't quite manage it. "Time travel's a dangerous business, Doc. The Tannens have been hating the McFlys for a hundred and thirty years. And in an alternate universe."

Doc's frown became even deeper, if that was possible. That meant that Marty had been hiding this for several days, at least. "Which Tannen did all this?"

"1955 Biff, most of it." Marty's voice rasped, and he coughed, again, and again. When he finally managed to stop, he took several careful breaths and tried to batter back down the pain that was lighting up his ribs from the inside. After a moment, Marty realized that Doc's hand was on his shoulder, holding him up, otherwise he would probably be out of the chair and on the floor. "Marty, you need to sleep. I'm going to stop the bleeding, then you're going to bed. I'll have to wake you up every few hours, to check on your head. I'll get you up later, and we'll take care of the rest of this." Doc waved a hand at Marty's body in general, then helped him shakily rest the cut leg on the footstool. "Don't worry about the water, Marty," Doc assured him, rambling on while cautiously washing the dirt and blood out of the deep cut. "It still looks horrible, but I've boiled it all, so it's at least germ-free, if not perfectly sanitary. This could probably use a few stitches, but there's no anesthetics yet, so short of getting you intoxicated, which is not going to happen because you probably have a light concussion, we'd have to put the stitches in with you awake. And I'm not going to do that, so we'll just wrap it and hope for the best."

Marty swayed as Doc helped him to his feet, taking weight of the wrapped leg. The last think he remembered was the man pulling a blanket over him before he was sleeping the sleep of the wounded.

BTTF BTTF BTTF

"Marty... Wake up, Marty." Marty couldn't help but moan a little as every muscle seemed to protest. He slowly sat up in the bed, noticing a bedroll and a pile of blankets on the floor.

"Sorry I took your bed, Doc."

A small smile touched Emmett Brown's lips. "Don't worry about it, Marty."

For the first time, Marty looked around the room where Doc was living. Half workshop, half living quarters, the roomy barn was mostly sung, with the exception of the large front doors, which were cracked and had slits between the pieces of wood. A huge machine took up much of the living floor space, and a large forge and harness for shoeing horses sat opposite it.

"Marty..." Marty realized that Doc was prodding at him, and turned this attention to the scientist. "I "What are the exact causes?"

Marty looked like he was going to protest; Doc knew he didn't want to tell him how long he had been hiding them.

"Out with it Marty, I want all the injuries."

Marty sighed - which hurt - and sat up a little more in the bed, carefully pulling down the blankets so he could see his legs. "Most of the new scrapes and bruises are from Buford. The leg is from the building... the one that's under construction? I flew into a pile of wood." He reached up to carefully feel his head. "I got chased by a bear, fell down a small cliff and hit my head on a wooden fence on the property of my great-great grandfather. Seamus took me inside while I was out and Maggie must have cleaned it up. I don't really know."

"What about the older injuries?" Doc brought over another bowl of water, a pile of bandages, a stack of toasted bread, and, to Marty's surprise, a bottle of whiskey. "You're not going to drink it," Doc said, catching Marty's startled glance at the alcohol. "I use it to sterilize things."

Marty nodded, took a deep breath as Doc started unwinding the bandages from around his leg, and continued. "Well, I got hit on the head... three times, four if you count the one where I got hit by the door but it didn't knock me out or anything. In 1985 A, I jumped off a building and landed on a stainless steel car. In 1955..." Marty winced as Doc's long fingers explored more carefully the long slash on his leg. "In 1955, I got hit in the head by a door, then Biff beat me up. That's what these-" He gestured at his side, the clumps of bruises over his ribs - "are from. Then I got almost run over by Indians and the Cavalry, a bear ate my boots, and then I was dragged through town by a madman on a horse who then decided to hang me."

Doc held up the bottle of whiskey. "Ready?" Marty looked askance at it, but nodded.

"Ready." Doc flinched in sympathy as he poured a splash of whiskey on Marty's leg. The teenager gasped and his hands scrambled for the bedsheets as the alcohol cleaned out the deep cut and burned like flame in the open wound. Doc quickly wrapped it up and Marty sighed with relief as the cut was closed off from the open air and out of sight.

"Sorry." Doc was almost as white as Marty.

"Don't worry about it, Doc," Marty parroted back to him, grinning shakily.

Doc handed him a slice of toast and a small bowl which turned out to be butter, then started in on Marty's head, thoroughly getting in the way of Marty's attempts to eat the light food. Marty almost didn't feel the bump anymore; it was small, compared to the rest of his problems, and Maggie had taken care of it well.

"Not much we can do about your neck," Doc commented, looking at the abraded skin. "It's not too bad, really. It'll heal and you can still talk, at least."

He kept looking Marty over, cleaning a small cut on the teenager's arm and handing him another piece of toast. Finally, everything was done but the ribs.

Marty couldn't hold back a small gasp as Doc prodded his ribs, feeling around the bruises. Doc frowned some more. "I don't think any of them are broken, but there's definately two that are cracked and three that have some heavy bruising."

Marty laughed dryly, then winced. "Feels about right." Doc started wrapping his friend's ribs tightly with several long bandages.

"Best we can do." Doc removed what was left of the pile of supplies from the bed. "You should go back to sleep, Marty. I'll wake you up in the morning and you can tell me why you're here."

Marty nodded, too tired to argue. "Thanks, Doc."

Doc put a hand on his shoulder.

"You're welcome, Marty."

Hi. If you read this the first day I posted it, you will notice I changed some things; I was reading it again and it didn't flow right, so I changed the middle some and reposted it. Sorry!

And that's the end. I was just sitting and thinking about how, in all the movies, all the bad stuff that happens, all the times he gets beat up or knocked out, and never gets any medical attention and is perfectly fine. Yeah, right.


End file.
